> I looked into a half-dozen or so alternatives, but all the other companies were either simply Google ads re-sellers, which is an ecosystem I don't quite understand, or were extremely sketchy, and had reviews complaining about how they trick people into downloading malware and such.
This is so true. I have tried to monetize my tools with ads quite a few times before, and the only way was to use Adsense. It's actually crazy how there is literally no quality alternative.
If you only want your ads next to quality content or on sites that are not drowning in ads so your ad is more impactful, then Google won’t help. But a third party can provide that through their curated list of sites.
Basically they are in the business of providing human curated targeting parameters instead of the algorithm based that Google supplies.
This is so true. I have tried to monetize my tools with ads quite a few times before, and the only way was to use Adsense. It's actually crazy how there is literally no quality alternative.